Society Books

The story of how women used quilts not only as bedcoverings, but as mementos of their friends, artistic expressions in bleak lives, political commentary when they didn't have the vote, fundraising, slogan flags--more ways than imagined! Quilts were even considered a symbol of women's repression at one time! An interesting slant on the role of women in American history (the keepers of morality!). Excellent pictures, great inspirations, and lots of fun! This book was the reference basis for the book and movie "How to Make an American Quilt."

My husband purchased this book for me and WOW! It is packed with information regarding the common bond that women had in fellowshipping, politicking, raising money for war efforts, changing society, gaining strength to have a voice, comforting others ...all through their domestic art of quilting. A must for quilters and for anyone who has a tendency to believe that domesticity disables one from being active to change society for the good of everyone!

I used the accompanying video in a workshop I taught at the University level. What a heartwarming and accurate trip through womens' history, linking us to them through a common craft. The book successfully informs us of their political and social challenges as we view the gorgeous creations of their hands. The music score is vital to portraying the feeling, as well, and is perfect to the subject.

I recommend viewing the video for any who are interested in womens' history or in the folkart of quilting.

Before I bought the book I saw the video three times. When I was watching it at home, one by one my family sat down and joined me. The panoramic view of American history through the quilts the women made from the Revolutionary War up through the 1800s was fascinating and touching. An excellent video and an excellent book.

i would like this kind of bible (hebrew english diglot bible) and i would like to buy but i do not know the handling fee or the person to be contacted or to send my money order, please write me this address below: juvy n caimor equitable pcibank colon br. cor.colon &pelaez sts.cebu city 6000 philippine thank you!

As an intermediate student of Hebrew, I go back and forth from Hebrew to English all the time, to give me a better understanding of the Bible and Hebrew at the same time. The Lord tells us to redeem the time and this is a good way to do that. I used to have to look up the passages twice, to do this out of two different Bibles. That took more time and I often skipped that step as a result, especially if I was away from home. The New King James Version that it uses is a very good translation. And as a word for word type of translation, it is very good for this purpose. The New Testament writers were Jews who thought in Hebrew. So a translation in Hebrew provides essential input to their thinking. It provides a vital link back to the original Old Testament passages that the Apostles must have had in mind.

This Bible is an indispensable tool for Intermediate Hebrew students. Some language teachers consider interlinears to a crutch which hinders learning. I disagree with that opinion. I use it as an initial tool for performing exegesis and word studies. If this tool is used in conjunction with other tools such as the Analyical Key to the Old Testament or Davidson's Analytical Thesaurus, the Word will come alive before your eyes.

The inclusion of the Hebrew translation of the New Testament is highly useful in seeing the Hebraic roots of the Christian faith. Many New Testament passages make more sense when presented from a Hebraic perspective. This is the first Bible I've encountered which does this without preliminary commentary disparaging the Greek manuscripts which G-d has chosen to preserve over the centuries.

We found this book in Florida by accident and picked up a copy. Upon returning, we shared it with our Rabbi and Cantor and now everyone in our congregation wants one. Having the Hebrew and English side by side is great. It is helping me improve my Hebrew while studying the scriptures. This is a must for anyone who is seriously looking for a great study tool.

Silver Spring, Maryland borders Washington, D.C. and shares the major thoroughfare of Georgia Avenue. I have lived on the Washington, D.C. side of the line for many years, and frequently take walks along the Georgia Avenue corridor: sometimes facing south into the District, sometimes north into Silver Spring, to the stores and the Metro or to sit in Blair Park and read.

With my walking though Silver Spring, I was fascinated by this collection of photographs "Historic Silver Spring" (2005) by Jerry McCoy and the Silver Spring Historical Society as part of a series of books called "Images of America" which celebrates neighborhoods and towns throughout our country. Although I have seen the streets and many of the places shown in this book many times, this book has given me a new understanding of and appreciation for a place with which I thought myself all too familiar. The book includes a collection of current scenes and of places that are no more, and they melded together for me in my looking at the photographs.

Silver Spring was founded by the Blair family of Maryland in the 1840s. It developed into a thriving residential commercial and transportation center and then went into a long decline. Sustained efforts over the last few decades have produced a revitalization of Silver Spring with the metro, mall, and new housing developments.

The book consists of over 120 pages of beautifully reproduced photographs together with careful annotations of date, place, and subject to help the viewer understand the photo and place it in a context. The four sections of the book include postcard photographs taken of Silver Spring in 1917 and 1928; photographs documenting the change in Silver Spring from the mansions of the Blairs through industrialization, through the present; photos of the main commercial intersection of Silver Spring at Georgia Avenue and Colesville Road; and photos of early homes in East Silver Spring.

I most enjoyed looking at the photographs of places I know or remembered. Thus I enjoyed the photos of the Silver Spring "Acorn" and "Spring" just off Georgia Avenue about four blocks from the District line. There is also a photograph of a mural that was painted recently at the site of Acorn Park on the wall of a failed department store to commemorate Silver Spring's past and present. There are pictures of trains, railway and streetcar stations, parks, post offices, ice cream parlors, and people -- and of the former Canada Dry bottling plant that closed a few years ago. The old Silver Spring Armory was demolished recently, and the book offers photos of the Armory, its demolition, and the new mall-associated construction that took it place. A community landmark was the Silver Spring Tastee Diner which was moved in the early 2000s from one site on Georgia Avenue to another site on the other side of the Georgia Avenue -- Colesville Road intersection. A homeless person named Norman Lane, the "Mayor" of Silver Spring, wandered the streets of downtown Silver Spring from the 1960s to his death in 1987. A sculpture was built in his memory in 1997, and it is reproduced here. There is much more. Introductory texts accompany each of the four sections of the book and each photograph is carefully annotated.

I was moved by the book, as it brought together places I know with places I didn't know. Documentary photographs such as those in this collection both bring a sense of continuity to a place and also gave me the brief feeling that time was somehow standing still. The book will help me look freshly and more carefully at places I see everyday. Those who know Silver Spring will love this book.

Robin Friedman

For anyone who grew up in Silver Spring this book is essential and for those who moved into SS, highly recommended. Highlights for me include: the original mansions of the founding Blair Family, the 1923 tornado that swept through SS, the 1969 attack on the draft board, the homeless "Mayor" of SS and many more, not the least of which is simply seeing the people looking back at me from the early 20th century up to now.

Jerry McCoy has enormous learning lightly worn. With literary skill and a scrupulous command of the images and their historical background, he provides the reader with a fascinating and remarkable look at one of the most interesting - if neglected - suburbs in the United States. This book is a valuable contribution to the history of Silver Spring, but it will also appeal to anyone interested in the story of a small city through the decades. All the outward characteristics of a town are here - commercial buildings; houses; railroad, taxi and trolley terminals; post offices; armories; banks; motels; public commemorations and celebrations - but so are children, students, families, firefighters, waitresses - people who through the ebb and flow of their lives give any place on a map its heart and soul. The thoroughness of Mr. McCoy's research and the skill with which he chose the images is impressive. He captures Silver Spring's story and spirit perfectly.

Years before I ever thought about doing a book on Silver Spring's history I was talking to a woman during the course of trying to raise awareness of the need to restore Silver Spring's 1937 post office mural, "The Old Tavern" (it had been removed from the post office over a decade earlier and placed in storage). I remember her telling me, rather adamantly, "Silver Spring has no history!" I could only think to myself, "My, what an ignorant remark to make about ANY place."

That brief exchange always stayed with me. If this one person thought that way, there were probably many more people who thought the same as she did. Thus was the "seed" planted for eventual publication of "Historic Silver Spring."

As founder and president of the Silver Spring Historical Society, this book justly falls under our organization's mission of "creating and promoting awareness and appreciation of Silver Spring's heritage through sponsorship of educational activities and the preservation and protection
of historical sites, structures, artifacts and archives." My hope for the book is that local residents (and their kids!) or even visitors will use the book as an actual guide to their exploration of the fascinating history of downtown Silver Spring.

The book is divided into four chapters of photographs:

1. Through the Lens of Willard R. Ross: Silver Spring in 1917 and 1928

Willard R. Ross (1860-1948) was a Washington, DC post card photographer who was the first to systematically document downtown Silver Spring, first on June 21, 1917, and nearly eleven years later on March 28, 1928. Twenty real-photo post cards views depict how the original "silver" spring (named for the mica specks in the water) and Georgia Avenue looked when the area was still mostly rural.

2. From Country Estates to Light Industry to Urban Towers: South Silver Spring

South Silver Spring is the area of our downtown community that borders the District of Columbia. Depicting views of the summer estates belonging to founder Francis Preston Blair and his two sons, all constructed in the mid 19th century, photographs show how the area quickly became industrialized in less than 100 years. Today this same area is experiencing an unprecedented building boom of apartments and condominiums due to the area's close proximity to public transportation and the downtown Washington, DC core.

3. Main Streets of History: Georgia Avenue and Colesville Road

These two primary arteries that serve as downtown Silver Spring's "Main Streets" are visually documented as one walks north on Georgia Avenue from Eastern Avenue (at the District of Columbia line) and proceeds to Colesville Road. Incredibly, many of the early to mid 20th century commercial structures located on these two streets still survive and have been restored (the 1938 Silver Theatre and Shopping Center are examples) but far more many structures are in danger of demolition as the "revitalization" of downtown Silver Spring begins to reach out from the central business core of Georgia Avenue at Colesville Road.

4. East Silver Spring's Forgotten Origin: Silver Spring Park

This 100 year old residential neighborhood, located two blocks east of Georgia Avenue, is the second oldest neighborhood build adjacent to downtown Silver Spring. A leafy neighborhood of bungalows, its recent surge in popularity (as well as real estate prices!) has begun to exhibit threats from "McMansionization" (tearing down of original smaller homes to consruct larger ones), encroaching commercial zoning, and potential routing of state of Maryland-subsidized light rail public transportation.

To get a better idea of what is contained in "Historic Silver Spring," an index has been prepared and is viewable at http://www.homestead.com/silverspringhistory/bus.html.

If you grew up or lived in Silver Spring and have stories to share, please send them to [...]. The society would also love to see photographs, post cards, advertising memorabilia, etc. for possible use in a future companion book.

Thanks for looking!

[...]

This book (which I have not read in entirerty) is probably the first history book written about the Ojibway. Most importantly and interestingly, the author was half Ojibway and half French and was intimate with many of the Ojibway elders he interviews. The authors biography is worthwhile in its own right. I cannot recommend a better book to gain a first hand perspective on colonial Ojibway customs, politics, culture, and the like. While the author (though Indian himself) does deplore Indian's lack of civilization, that really only adds to the book by revealing western society's rascist attitudes to the Indians. The author has been educated and christianized and his rascism is in respect to these institutions. In most other regards he has great respect for his Ojibway family.

I found this book to be most facinating, and helped me to gain some knowledge of how my ancestors lived. Four generations of my relatives were born into the L'Anse Band of Chippewa and Lac Vieux Desert Band of Indians, but I had no history of how they lived. This book helped me have some insight on their lives and their parents lives. I have given each of my children a copy of this book so that they too can have some knowledge of what their native american relatives lives were like. A most interesting read!!

During the 1850s, William Whipple Warren, an Ojibway "Half BReed," a member of the Minnesota Territorial Legislature and frequent correspondent for the "Minnesota Democrat" (a newspaper out of Saint Paul), spoke to all the elders, story tellers and medicine men of the Ojibway Nation and wrote a book. Unfortunately, he died of tuberculosis before finishing it, a fact that has many historians cursing their rotten luck. But what he achieved was priceless. His book tells the story of the Ojibway Nation's migrations, their battles against other tribes (like the Dakota, the Fox, and the Mundua), and how they first came to know the white man. FOr those who, like myself, went to public schools which portrayed the Indians as peaceful children of nature, this book explodes like a nuclear warhead on all misconceptions. Pre-Columbian America was a very brutal and VERY bloody place. Warren details the Ojibway's torure of captives, their vigilante approach to justice, and their vicious blood feuds against other tribes. THis book is NOT for the squeamish. Parts of it make Herbert Asbury's "THe Gangs of New York" look, well, kind of like a kid's game. Do NOT read this book if you posess a weak stomache. But it also proves that the history of the AMerican Indian is far too complex to fit with anyone's politically motivated attempts to push it into a box. I, for one, am deeply disapointed that Mr. Warren died before coming even close to completing his projected 7 volumes of work on the Ojibway Nation. There is much in this book already, though, to fascinate the reader and fill several film scripts. Therefore, this is a book that I recommend strongly for anyone with a strong stomache. William Warren, I salute you!

An excellent book covering the history of the Ojibwas primarily in the Northern Wisconsin/Minnesota area. William Warren did a fine job of badgering the tribal elders till he received the information he sought. Written in the 1880's, Warren writes of the different clans and their interactions, the introduction to the white men they liked (French) and hated (British), and the constant warring with other tribes (mostly Sioux) over prime hunting lands which took the lives of many. According to Warren, "Ojibwa" means "to roast until puckered", needless to say, he's not talking about dinner. If just one book on the Ojibwas is in your plans, this should be the one. I myself would prefer to read a book written by someone who actually talked to these tribal elders over 100 years ago, not someone who attempts to do so nowadays, generations (and clouded memories) later.

This program indeed is The Home Business Success Kit with emphasis on the word "The". It is truly unprecedented. No other program compares to it. I was in dire search of a genuinely solid resource that finally would not only deliver relevent information but also provide point to point guidance of how to establish an internet business, design/create a website, and develop an online presence uniquely my own. I needed a program that would communicate to me the SEO strategies necessary to engage for optimum success on the internet. This program did precisely that and more. It even has an excellent resource center providing you with a wealth of information, unbelievable support and thus encouragement to assure your success.

After I was introduced to this program I searched no further because everything I needed to have a prominent successful internet business I found inside of Mick Moore's The Home Business Success Kit. His expertise in this arena is impeccable. Instead of being a purchase of yet another program it was a sound investment with the return of a successful future in internet marketing.

If you desire to have a prominent internet business,...you can by investing in your future with Mick Moore's The Home Business Success Kit. The decision is yours, choose wisely.
To Your Success!

If there is only ONE program you purchase to move forward along the information cyber highway, make sure it's this one!
Mick is the BEST.

Mick Moore is an internet marketing expert. His genius is that he has created an easy to use, step by step system that any non-techie (like myself) can use to use the Internet to make money.

If you apply the strategies and techniques Mike Moore teaches, you will make money on the internet.

I am an average computer user and retired. I had too much time on my hands and wanted to generate some extra income and the internet is the obvious way to go. But I needed to understand how it worked and what I needed to do in order to achieve my goals. Mick Moore's Home Business Success Kit explained in down to earth, easy to understand, terms how to do what needed to be done in a coherent, organized manner. Not only does he explain the basic steps to getting started but he tells how to build a web site and get it placed high in the search engines. I am beyond thrilled to have found this fountain of information.

I cannot urge you enough to save yourself time and grief by buying The Home Business Success Kit. Awesome information.

Find people you served with, find friends, fathers, etc. This book guides you step-by-step in locating just about anyone who has any sort of military connection. Now in 7th edition. Foreword by William Westmorelan

Now in its eighth edition, How to Locate Anyone Who Is or Has Ben in the Military, collaboratively written by Lt. Col. Richard S. Johnson and Debra Johnson Knox, is a direct, easy-to-use, "reader friendly", how-to-guide packed with tips, tricks, and techniques for finding anyone with an American military connection, whether they are active duty, reserve, or retired. From steps anyone can take to verify claims of a military background, to locating veterans for a reunion, How to Locate Anyone Who Is or Has Ben in the Military is packed with practical, useable information, directories, Internet sources, and much, much more. To put it simply but accurately, How to Locate Anyone Who Is or Has Ben in the Military is an excellent and useful resource.

Like any large Government organization, the military has it's own ways of doing things. And to complicate matters, the way you may find a person in the Navy is not always the same, for example, for the Army or Air Force.

Richard and Debra Johnson provide all the goodies on how to find or get information on servicemembers...retired or active.

There is a wealth of information you can get and this book provides tips and tricks you may not even know about.

So if you're looking for a long lost relative, friend or would like to see your grandfathers service record from WWII, here is the resource book you NEED to do it all correctly! Includes addresses, fees, sample forms and other invaluable information!

I have run the website Sgt. Mom's Place (recently partnered with Maingate.com) for approximately 4 years now and this book has been an excellent resource for me!! I constantly get requests to help someone find a lost friend or relative, others wanting the records for their father or relative from WWII, etc. I have used this book countless times to give these visitors the information needed to help them in their search. My thanks to the authors!! I will continue to buy the updated versions too so I can keep up to date on everything!

Marion Lane and the HSUS have given dog lovers an excellent book that covers the range of subjects from selecting the right dog to facing the inevitable decline and death of our beloved pets. The book is not just for the "doggy set." It is written in language that everyone can understand and should be a valuable resource for those wanting to better understand and care for that most important family member. The author's knowledge about and love of dogs comes through on every page. It really is a book that belongs in every dog owner's library - even if it is the only "dog care" book.

I bought this book because I am a fan of the writing ability of its author, Marion Lane. Over the years, she has written many articles and columns about various aspects of choosing, raising, and living well with a pet. I like her perspective on the importance of the human-animal bond, and I like the down-to-earth, often humorous, always wise way she talks to her readers. I am not a "dog person" myself, but many of my friends, coworkers, and neighbors are. I've lent out the book to a friend considering getting a new dog after being dogless for many years. She found Marion's section on factors to consider in choosing a dog very helpful. I took the book to the office when two of my coworkers had to decide how to handle end-of-life matters for their beloved pets. Marion's sensitive handling of the deep feelings involved brought Cheryl and Gisela to tears, but those were tears they needed to cry to loosen the tight knot of feelings that weren't being fully expressed. They found Marion's ideas comforting. I'm glad to have this book as a resource to lend out to my friends and acquaintances who have benefitted from reading relevant sections. I wish that prospective dog owners would read a book like this before getting a dog, so that they would know what they are undertaking, and could make a better decision about whether they and a particular dog are likely to make a good match.

This is a very informative and helpful guide to dog care. It also takes animal welfare seriously, suggesting that you adopt your dog from an animal shelter and by telling ways to help dogs! A must-read for every dog owner!

We just received a dog from the humane society a week ago. A few days prior to getting the dog I bought this book and read about the first half. I found it incredibly helpful and informative. Most resources you read mostly have information regarding bringing home puppies from breeders, with very little about shelters. Not only did this book help calm my nerves about getting the dog, but I refer to it constantly to answer my questions that come up.

The power of your worldview lies in the fact that it is hidden. It is a collection of your underlying beliefs and assumptions which color all of your thinking, yet is rarely examined openly. Idols for Destruction is a challenging read, but well worth the effort for those who would like to gain a fresh perspective on the worldviews that they have unconciously adopted. The author writes from a Christian perspective, and most people will probably not agree with all of his ideas, but he systematically goes through most of the 20th century influences on Western thought and compares them with a traditional Judeo-Christian world view. He does an excellent job in drawing out the implications of the various philosophical systems and providing examples of how they are manifest in modern culture. The most useful things I have gained from this book are first, a review of most of the philosophies which have shaped this century and a heightened awareness of what worldview is implicitly expressed by various thinkers and writers. This helps me to be a more critical thinker and to analyze people's arguments better. The second thing I have gained is the realization that there are other options then whatever worldview happens to be the most popular today. This has opened up whole new areas of thought and allowed me to understand a much broader range of ideas by people who have differing worldviews. This book is very well documented. It helps if you have had a college cource on Philosophy or have a quick reference book to help you to understand all of his references to philosophical and moral systems. It is not casual reading, and it will force you to do some hard thinking, but it is well worth the effort.

This is an extensive and thoroughly researched examination of the ruinous consequences of the unbelieving thought that in the last hundred years has saturated our culture. Schlossberg argues that in all areas of thought our approach to reality is always determined by specifically religious assumptions, such as our theories of knowledge, history, value, and the future. These are assumptions that we rarely consider, but determine the results of our thinking, and subsequently, our action. As secularization in our culture has progressed, we have substituted what is created for the Creator, and placed the created reality at the top of our pyramid of values, with disastrous consequences. This constitutes the idolatry.

From this framework, Schlossberg examines many of the various idols that we have erected in this way. These include: history as an autonomous and inexorable unfolding of a closed system of necessary events; humanism, which elevates humans to the status of gods, but inevitably leads to a materialistic evaluation of them and a dehumanization of the people it professes to help; money, evaluated from the standpoint of an institutionalization of envy that believes that no one should have more than anyone else and the forced redistribution of wealth and crushing of motivation and incentive to succeed that it entails; nature, which is viewed through the lens of a philosophical naturalism that combines with secular humanism to dehumanize people; power, which resides exclusively in the state, and makes the state (and therefore the individuals who rule it) the source of, and therefore above, the law; and finally religion, which tends to blindly embrace whatever trends happen to be dominant in a culture and therefore ends up supporting, rather than casting down, the idols erected by the unbelieving world. In the final two chapters, he makes some predictions about where our idolatry will take us, and addresses how Christians should face the gods of an idolatrous age.

This book seems to have been first published in 1983, but I think that the analysis and research are outstanding, and the conclusions are probably more inescapable now than they were 25 years ago. Some examples are: "We should understand totalitarianism to refer not to the severity of the regime . . . but rather the scope of its purview. A totalitarian regime is one that seeks to control every aspect of communal life, and to bring as much of private life as possible into the sphere of the communal"; ". . . the attempt to be contemporaneous, which is to say relevant, ensures the irrelevance of theologies and churches." I was amazed by the parallels between this book and Herman Bavinck's "Philosophy of Revelation" (1908), which are very similar in methodology and are well worth reading together, which I did by accident. I heartily recommend this book - it should absolutely be required reading for all western Christians.

I've read this book three times in the last five or six months and will read it again before the year is over. Why? The language is elevated and the concepts are deep. Multiple reads are the way to mine this treasure for all it is worth.

As for content, I concur with the observations made in the previous review entitled "Examine your preconceptions". Adding anything more would be redundant.

A bit heady, but worth it. Schlossberg writes as a Christian and systematically goes through the 20th century influences on Western thought and compares them with a traditional Judeo-Christian worldview. This is a thinking book-and will cause you to think past your "in the box" notions about our faith. As the author quotes, "He who marries the spirit of an age, soon finds himself a widower."

This book is very thought provoking and efficiently reviews several perspectives regarding the connection between humans and animals. It is very well written and succintly conceptualizes the human-animal bond.

This book was a pleasure to read. It expresses many ideas I've had myself (and that you've probably had, too) but more deeply and eloquently than I would ever have dreamed possible. Irvine ties so many different observations, facts, and feelings into a comprehensive framework that makes perfect sense.

I would caution the prospective buyer that this book would probably be too difficult a read for someone who hasn't received some college-level instruction in the social sciences and the philosophy of science.

Leslie Irvine's voice provides those in animal science, animal welfare and just plan animal lovers with a new insight into the psychological relationship of the human-animal bond. A compelling theoretical read with real-life examples. A must have in any animal welfare/animal social policy or human-animal bond literature.
Kate Nicoll, MSW Soul Friends, Inc.

Sociologist Dr Leslie Irvine's If You Tame Me is a very important and inspiring book. It will be of great interest to all who love animals and are concerned about their welfare. If you sense a kinship with nonhuman animals and the natural world, you will thoroughly enjoy this book. It is very well-written and well researched. It takes many of the assumptions that we commonly make about the animal "other" and skilfully dismantles them to reveal pernicious social constructs that should stimulate us all to be more cognizant of how we treat other species. I couldn't put it down!

I am a gardening fanatic and have collected and enjoyed Clematis vines
for years. I own over 55 different varieties and have come to enjoy
reading about the various species. This book is the most comprehensive
and enjoyable to date. There are many pictures and a lot of detailed
information. Excellent Resource.

The word "encyclopedia" is sometimes overused, but not in the case of this book by Mary K. Toomey. The reader will enjoy learning about the huge number of clematis varieties with information on each one. The author even includes the different names that some varieties have in the market. This volume is a must for the serious gardener and especially for the clematis enthusiast. I highly recommend it.

I own every book ever written about clematis. Unfortunately, this book was written by a Brit. That's the only negative for a North American grower. If you can own only one book on clematis this is the one. The author is very generous with her information. At least read this one cover to cover before buying anything else.

and readable, and inspirational. i like that it not only gives the usual flower description, plant height, pruning group but also indicates whether a plant is vigorous, compact, proliferous (habit), flowers early spring, late summer, both (flowering period), can grow through shrubs, against a light background, or sprawling on the ground with creeping junipers (recommended use). and the chapter on pruning, and all illustrations within, is priceless esp since i've just started into group A and B plants (i have mostly group C viticellas that i cut to ground level). i think now that i'd like to start a clematis collection, and try out the other species like integrifolia, macropetala, alpina, texensis, and their wonderful varieties. virtually each page is a pleasant surprise of yet another clematis i've never heard of before, splashed with pictures that are just beautiful. this book is definitely drool material for the planthusiast, to be savoured gingerly on a cold and lazy winter day like today :-]